Former CIA officer Buck Sexton wrote an opinion piece at The Hill that asked, “Is President Trump paranoid or is the Deep State out to get him?” Sexton, a conservative radio host, characterized the president’s performance at his summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin as “less-than-stellar,” but questioned the basis of much of the resulting controversy, which has been driven by Democrats and former members of the Obama administration.

Sexton wrote that Trump should not have equated Russian and American policy and intelligence agencies. However, he asserts that Trump’s Russia policy has been more aggressive than Barack Obama’s: “more sanctions, more weapons for the Ukrainians, more expulsions of Russian diplomats. These are just facts.”

Is John Brennan monetizing his security clearance? Is John Brennan making millions of dollars divulging secrets to the mainstream media with his attacks on @realDonaldTrump ?

While Trump may have not “put his best foot forward,” Sexton writes, Trump showed that he is taking very personally the issue of Russian election interference that leftists’ attempt to then cast his election as illegitimate. Sexton characterizes U.S. intelligence services as superior to Russia’s: ”Overall, there's no question – our intel agencies are moral, ethical, have more integrity than anything the Russians have got. I should know – I used to be a CIA officer.”

Sexton goes on to say that clearly there was a “cabal of anti-Trumpism at the pinnacle of the intelligence community under the Obama administration.” Pointing out that former CIA Director John Brennan called Trump’s performance at Helsinki “treasonous,” Sexton asks: “Does John Brennan not know the definition of treason?” Noting that former FBI Director James Comey, former DNI James Clapper, former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, former FBI acting director Andrew McCabe have all brought Trump’s loyalty into question and thus placing themselves clearly in the “hashtag anti-Trump resistance,” Sexton said that it is no wonder that Trump is a “bit sensitive to the allegations of collusion” when “supposedly nonpartisan intel officials have come out publicly against him.” And some of these, Sexton writes, “were personally involved in concocting the collusion fantasy with the Russians when they were in government.”

Sexton writes that Trump continues to inspire “insane hysteria in his critics” while the U.S. intelligence community “will have politicized leadership going forward because they hate Trump so much today. That’s a loss for all of us – and that's not Trump’s fault.” Sexton went on to say that Trump will do better at his next encounter with Putin. However, Trump’s critics have an “incurable case of Trump derangement syndrome.”

One of the very few Republicans to address the status of Trump’s critics is Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). On Monday, Paul met with the president to ask for the revocation of Brennan’s security clearance. Paul tweeted, “Is John Brennan monetizing his security clearance? Is John Brennan making millions of dollars divulging secrets to the mainstream media with his attacks on Donald Trump?”

Brennan is currently a senior national security and intelligence analyst for NBC News and MSNBC.

Signaling Republican criticism of Brennan, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said on Sunday that it is “extremely disturbing“ to see Brennan and Comey “express the kind of extreme bias that they’ve shown now.” Goodlatte is calling for Brennan to testify on Capitol Hill.

Spero News writer Martin Barillas is a former US diplomat, who also worked as a democracy advocate and election observer in Latin America. His first novel 'Shaken Earth', is available at Amazon.